Pedro Rey Biel

Associate Professor of Behavioral Economics
ESADE Business School (U. Ramón Llull)

I am a Behavioral Economist who combines theoretical and empirical methodologies, as well as laboratory and field experiments to understand economic decision making and how it is affected by the design of proper incentive schemes which take into account the complex array of behavioral traits behind human motivation.

I am Associate Professor of Behavioral Economics at ESADE Business School, Ramón Llull University (Barcelona, Spain). At ESADE we have a strong  behavioral group working under the umbrellas of the ESADE Decision Lab and the Institute for Data-Driven Decisions. I am also de the director of the Policy Impact Lab, part of the Centre for Economic Policy & Political Economy (ESADE EcPol), pushing for policy evaluation, public data availability and experimentation to conduct research. I have also been recently appointed as affiliated researcher of J-PAL Poverty Action Lab.

I have published my work in leading academic journals in economics such as The Journal of European Economic Association, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, The Economic Journal, European Economic Review and The Journal of Public Economics as well as in the leading field journals such as Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and Experimental Economics. My work has regularly appeared in popular media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. I am also a regular contributor to the popular Economics blog Nada es Gratis, where I served as editor (2015-2019) and as President of the Association (2017 to 2019). I am also a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, NPJ Digital Medicine (Nature), Journal of Experimental and Behavioral Economics, SERIEs Journal of the Spanish Economic Association and Economía Industrial.

Most of my work implies collaborating with public and private institutions in the application of behavioral insights to optimal organizational design. Please take a look at my Consulting page for a sample of companies for which I have designed Randomized Control Trails (RCTs), implemented organizational changes and incentives schemes, and conducted executive education workshops.

Finally, I am an Honorary Member of Asociación Española de Economía, where I was an elected member of its board (2017-2020) and served as President of its Education Committee. Since 2018 I have been a member of the Education Committee of  the European Economic Association. I have also recently ended my 5 year tenure as member of the Economics Evaluation Committee at Agencia Estatal de Investigación

News

December 5, 2022
New 45′ video giving a overview of advice to PhD students available here.

November 28, 2022
New working  paper «Gender Gaps in Access to Medical Intern Positions: The Role of Competition«, joint with M. Diez-Rituerto, J. Gardeazabal and N. Iriberri available at CEPR and here.

July 20, 2022
New article «Understanding Performance in Test Taking: The Role of Question Difficulty Order«, joint with L. Anaya, N. Iriberri and G. Zamarro is published at Economics of Education Review.

March 9, 2022
New video explaining how to evaluate public policies using randomized controlled trials (RCTs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jntC6YkcBNk

December 2, 2021
New article with Miguel Almunia about the potential of administrative data at the monograph about public policy evaluation by Cuadernos económicos ICE. Read our article here.

November 29, 2021
Awarded the ClosingGap Award for «Generating economic knowdledge about equality of opportunities». Read more here.

October 25, 2021
Awarded as IP one of the 15 projects at Social Research Grant Call 2021 from Fundación La Caixa. Read more here.